Wednesday 29 October 2008 08.00 EDT
First published on Wednesday 29 October 2008 08.00 EDT

I hate to be a spoilsport, but this election is over. In six days from now the polling stations will be opening on election day. Later that day - sometime before midnight on the east coast of the United States - Barack Obama will be declared America's 44th president.

In fact, not only is this election over, it's in danger of getting boring.

At this point it's customary to insert the usual disclaimers: maybe many more Americans are racist than our worst fears. Maybe Lehman Brothers will uncover a spare $50bn mislaid through an accounting error. Maybe Russia will invade Poland tomorrow. (Readers can envisage their own more horrifying scenarios at this point.) Maybe Obama supporters will read articles such as this and not bother turning out. Or maybe all the opinion polls conducted in the last month were wrong. Writing on Cif yesterday, Dan Kennedy provided a compelling round-up of the various pitfalls.

Alternatively, as Groucho Marx once suggested: "Who do you believe - me, or your own eyes?"

Based on every shred of evidence, Obama has won and it is all over bar the voting. The only uncertainty at this point is his margin of victory. This is not something that can be said in public, or even out loud, because all parties - Democrats, Republicans and especially the media - have a vested interested in pretending that, oh, anything could happen. And it might. But it probably won't. Obama's lead is too deep in too many states, and too close to polling day.

In the meantime we have to pretend it's a close-run thing, partly because it might be but mainly because it makes for better copy. As you read this, teams of journalists are scouring the US hinterland for doleful examples of incipient and not so incipient racism among voters, to frighten their readers and viewers. In fact, here's a handy template for the stuff currently filling the columns of the New York Times and Washington Post:

The town of [Insert Name], deep in upstate Ohio/Michigan/Indiana, was once a thriving metropolis, renowned as the centre of America's [manufactured good] industry. But its factories have long closed and their jobs shipped overseas to China/Mexico/Botswana. All that is left are the memories of people such as Local Stereotype. Over a cup of coffee in Typical Diner on [Insert Name's] once thriving Main Street - where six out of every four stores are boarded up - Mr Stereotype said: "I'm from a family of lifelong Democrats. My Pappy and Grandpappy worked here on the [manufactured good] assembly line. Times are hard now, sure enough. But I ain't voting for no Muslim."

And so on. Repeat over several days and forward to the Pulitzer Prize committee.

Many pundits will declare that the economic collapse in September was the cause of Obama's victory and McCain's downfall. And up to a point they will be right, although the spectacular Wall Street flameout last month will only account for the size of Obama's victory, not its fact. Let's not forget that the US economy was already tanking well before Lehman Brothers collapse - Bear Stearns went belly-up way back in March, and the disastrous fall in house prices and sharp upward spike in home foreclosures and mortgage defaults began last year (and even earlier, in some regions). Output was already slowing and unemployment was rising long before September's surprise. So the economy would have stunk even without AIG and the rest of the debacle. But that won't stop pundits from claiming that the economy only became a big issue in mid-September. They will be wrong.

What really lost McCain the election was that he ran a dreadful campaign - one of the worst in living memory. What was particularly hilarious was the way his team seemed intent on replicating, in every detail, the losing formula pioneered by Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries: first run on experience. Then dismiss Obama as just a good speech-maker. Then make some cack-handed racial slurs. Then claim you are really the better agent of change ... the list goes on. (About the only thing McCain hasn't recycled is the 3am phone call ad - and that was Hillary's most effective spot.)

Just as Clinton's campaign walked into every trap the Obamanauts laid for it, so too did McCain's. The exception was his feckless choice of Sarah Palin as vice-president - which perhaps damaged him as much as the economy. At a stroke McCain managed to undercut his single biggest advantage over Obama, his years of experience. And Palin's ill-judged and nakedly partisan convention speech instantly shot down any bipartisan appeal to moderate and independent voters. Good work. (Yes, Palin's speech energised the party's base - and that in itself should have set off the alarm bells.)

But all this is in the future. Now we have to get back to pretending that Obama hasn't really got this all locked up sometime next Tuesday night.